Mail-Followup-To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
References: <4F0970A8.3040503@latex-project.org> <4F0978F2.9000703@nag.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-ID:  <20120108114619.GA29129@oberdiek.my-fqdn.de>
Date:         Sun, 8 Jan 2012 12:46:19 +0100
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de>
From: Heiko Oberdiek <heiko.oberdiek@GOOGLEMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: trial typesetting support
To: LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de
In-Reply-To:  <4F0978F2.9000703@nag.co.uk>
Precedence: list
Status: R

On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 11:07:30AM +0000, David Carlisle wrote:

> On 08/01/2012 10:32, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
> >I just had a look into the following question on TeX.sx:
> >
> >http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/40330/centered-captions-containing-vref-may-not-always-appear-as-expected
> >
> 
> >Anybody some good ideas how to address topic this in a general fashion?
> >
> 
> Not really, but tabularx has to play this game a lot

Another player is amsmath. It needs to know the width of the
equations in order to know where to put the equation number
(e.g. below the equation if there is no place in the same line).
The measuring is done in macro \gmeasure@, it sets the switch
\ifmeasuring@ to true.

A more general mechanism would be nice, then a package
can disable some stuff (e.g. writing to .aux files) in
trial runs without knowing and supporting all the packages
that uses trials.

Elements of that feature could be:

* A trial switch or something like that.
  If the trial switch is available and turned on, then the
  macros can automatically disable some stuff not needed in the
  trial.
* A possibility to record undo steps in a hook that is called
  after the trial. A group resets the state for local assignments.
  But that does not work for global settings of counters. Or
  if a acronym macro expands the acronym in the first use und
  uses the short form in later uses. After the trial the acronym
  should be reset to the state before the trial.

Also there might be differnt purposes of the trial that might
require different steps for suppressing or undoing:
* Measurement (amsmath, ...)
* ...?
  
Yours sincerely
  Heiko Oberdiek